Turned Off.

In recent months, the more I progress through the year, the more numb I become to anything really around me. Now, this may sound like some weird depression thing, but it’s not that at all. For a while, my mental health has been perfectly balanced, and for that I am happy about, but there is no denying that emotionally I am turned off.

I don’t know how, when or why it happened, but beyond my family and my very close friends, any new emotional connection I could form with someone is completely stunted. I comprehend that I like someone, or that I like having them around, but beyond that, it’s just completely turned off.

It is perhaps a bit of a worry when there is someone in your life who does like you more than just a friend, yet they’re literally sat on a park bench waiting for me to meet them in that same place. Don’t get me wrong, I know how awful it sounds, and this person knows all of this because I have been open and honest about it. I have also said for them not to wait, or make themselves exclusive to me, but ultimately, that is their choice whether they do or don’t do it.

For some reason though, that is just where I am at. Emotionally dead on the inside. But it’s perhaps not just only that. Something else rings true in my head and it’s based around monogamy.

The moment I start to think of being monogamous, I just turn off. I struggle to have sex, I struggle to see someone because the pressure is too intense and that’s when I just revert back to factory settings. This however, is not an excuse to be a “whore” or “slag”, it’s just more of being of that age, and being subjected to this topic in not one, not two, but three of my previous relationships.

Monogamy was my thing. I’d happily be monogamous but ultimately it would fail because I was settling. Am I perhaps waiting for someone to break down the walls and flick that switch inside me back up? I don’t know. For the time being, the concept of being monogamous is definitely foreign and whilst some can see it as some “get out clause” it’s not that at all.

I have no obligation to be with anyone. I have crafted a life where I am independent and self sufficient in everything I need outside of making money. I have bought my house, I have decorated, furnished and crafted it all myself and having to add someone else to that is perhaps a tedious thing to do. It’s teaching someone how to fit into my life, but why should they? I don’t need another person. In the age of apps and having built up contacts through many years of being on-again-off-again single, any needs that physically need to be met, can be met quickly if needs be.

Should I chain myself to one person? No. Only if that person is myself. I only need me, and it’s perhaps this ‘selfish’ or ‘self-preserving’ way of thinking that has switched off my emotions. Why open myself up, when I’m perfectly fine by myself, to possibly be hurt and hurtled back 7 months into a deep, dark pit of despair?